Wednesday, March 28, 2018

I remember so well when the first iPad for education was announced in 2010 by Steve Jobs. When I saw the video presentation, I was looking forward to experiment the amazing innovative device! It was love at first site!

And then iPad 2 in 2011. Wow! New amazing media world opened to use in Education! Teachers were delighted to have amazing devices in the classroom and young people loved it! It was so exciting. I do love the mind of Steve Jobs. He was special. He was a real innovator.

So, this week, we have two new tablets for Education, almost at the same time. Chrome OS tablet and the new iPad geared toward the education.

Last March 26, Google announced its first education tablet designed with Chrome OS. The Acer Chromebook Tab 10 will be the first such Chrome OS tablet for schools to land in kids’ hands.

"Since their debut, schools have chosen Chromebooks because they are fast, easy-to-use and manage, shareable, secure and affordable. We've listened carefully to feedback from educators around the world, and one common theme is that they want all the benefits of Chromebooks in a tablet form."

The tablets also will enable students to jump into educational AR experiences given their handheld form factor and Google’s upcoming rollout of the Expeditions AR platform on the devices, which the company promises will allow students to visit the Great Barrier Reef, the Colosseum and International Space Station said Lucas Matney (TechCrunch).

Being a Chrome OS device, it will integrate into the IT systems of schools with a Chrome education license and will give students a device they can easily pass around and jot notes on with stylus and touch controls.

Price US:

The device itself is a pretty standard 9.7 inch 2048×1536 tablet that will retail for $329, the same price as Apple’s entry-level iPad. Read more on Blog Google Education here

And yesterday, March 27, Tim Cook presented the new iPad for schools. He hosted a “field trip” to talk about the new iPad 9.7 inch: "Like a computer. Unlike any computer."

Google has won over a large portion of the education market in the US, something that can be credited to both the cheapness of web-based Chromebooks and the accessibility of Google’s apps.

Apple knows this, so yesterday, it hosted a “field trip” — that’s actually what it was called — for press, teachers, and student journalists at a magnet high school in Chicago.

The school iPad also supports ARKit, which means it can run sophisticated AR apps. One example is an app that lets you dissect a virtual frog. (You don’t even need to Google“formaldehyde.”) And there’s a new Apple-designed curriculum called Everyone Can Create, which joins Everyone Can Code as part of a suite of apps for, well, making things: music, art, videos.

Lauren Goode/ The Verge

Price US:

In an attempt to make it easier for schools and educational customers to bring iPad into the classroom, Apple is providing its 2018 iPad at a discount, cutting the just-announced tablet from the regular starting price of $329 down to $299. Wow! Read more on Apple Education here

Steve Jobs was the first to revolutionize the concept of education bringing attractive technology in Education. iPads, iPods, smartphones on the hands of all students. Introducing those Apple devices in the classroom was such an experience! I did it for the first moment (I was a former teacher on TV Schools, so I loved technology since the early years in 1989) and my students were so glad to work in the classroom with the gadgets they used only for fun. They loved technology and they had grown up working with touch devices, so tablets were intuitive for them.

Now, Google Chrome tablets are lightweight and durable, allowing students to collaborate, create and learn from anywhere. And they come with a low-cost Chromebook stylus inside that doesn’t require charging or pairing. The stylus uses advanced machine learning to predict student writing for a natural writing experience.Teachers are always thinking in captivating the students to a better school performance and new digital skills. So, they understand how gadgets like iPad and Chrome OS tablet could excite the students in the classroom. And they do incredible experiences, developing digital skills to the job market in the future.I only could read some of the most interesting tech articles. I'm not living in the US. I only can present the principal features of the two devices, Google and Apple tablets, after reading these tech opinions. They were there, they could touch and work with the new devices. Teachers, it's up to us to choose the best to all of our students when we will can to test and compare pros and cons the two devices in our countries.

Saturday, March 24, 2018

It's that time of year when most of us in European countries and in North America have to move our clocks forward by one hour. USA states did onMarch 11, 2018, 3:00:00 am local daylight time instead. Also called Spring Forward, Summer Time, and Daylight Savings Time.It is that time of year, when wake-up calls mean sunshine and days get a bit longer. Early risers rejoice and those of you who hit the snooze button - at least you get to do it with a bit of light in your room. However, this year students are happy, because DST starts on Easter season. Wow! They are lucky!Well, at this time of the year time changes! In Europe clocks changes next Sunday 25 March (almost in all countries!).

However there's a great campaign against the day light saving time. People around the world are far way to change their time. Efforts to kill off daylight saving time are nearly as old as the time shift itself. And many of the commonly offered rationales for daylight saving timeno longer hold true.The implementation of Daylight Saving Time has been fraught with controversy since Benjamin Franklin conceived of the idea.

And then there's the physiological cost of DST: fatigue! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regard insufficient sleep as a public health problemin general— and the hour you lose in the spring makes it worse. "Lack of sleep has many ramifications, from minor to major, depending on your accumulated sleep debt. Short term, lack of sleep tends to have an immediate effect on your mental and emotional states."

About 60 percent of people feel the effects of lost sleep the Monday after they spring forward, the "consumer education" arm of sleep products manufacturers.

Daylight Saving Time wasn't introduced in Europe until 1914 and America until 1918, when it was meant to conserve energy for World War I. The practice became widespread on 21 March 1918 as a way to reduce the number of hours homes needed to use lighting and electricity. The thought was, essentially, Franklin's: that people tend be more active in the evenings, so the extra daylight there would mean fewer hours where people lit their houses at night. In 1942, during World War II, DST was enacted again, but year-round. Afterwards, well, adoption varied.

credits: Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images

Education:

That's right, Daylight Saving Time starts on Sunday. That means that on Monday morning some students may come to class complaining about their lost hour of sleep. They may also wonder why we have Daylight Saving Time.Like anytime you lose sleep, springing forward causes decreases in performance, concentration, and memory common to sleep-deprived individuals, as well as fatigue and daytime sleepiness.Well, teachers know that DST can be disruptive for someteenagers and school children everywhere. Students feel tired in the morning courses during the first week.

The rationale behind changing the times on the clock makes little (or more likely, no) sense to them.

Be patient! Day Light Saving Time must go on this year. So, here you have some resources.

The following videos offer concise explanations of Daylight Saving Time:

Videos

You can include one or two of these videos into your school curriculum to provide a good explanation of the rationale for Daylight Saving Time. Students will understand better the reasons of DST. And please, discuss pros and cons with your students. They will explain better their reasons to be so sleepy in the first weeks after DST.

In Portugal and the UK clocks change soon after the start of Spring. We have the same time (GMT).

This year watches will go forward by one hour at 1am on 25 March, which is the final Sunday of the month. This marks the start Daylight Saving Time - which means there will be less sunlight in the morning and more in the evenings.

Students will be invited to do some research about DST in other countries around the world as some different traditions in every country.

Curricula: Sciences; Languages, History, Geography.

Level : Primary education; Secondary Education.

Teachers must adapt the activities to the levels they are teaching, of course.

Fight Ilegal Contents

Member

Email

Expert

My website

Global Junior Challenge 2004

Micro-Innovator ICT Learning

Certified Expert

Recent Publications

Souto, G. (2013) Time for Action: New Challenges in Secondary Education. At Conference Proceedings, International Conference The Future of Education, Florence, Italy.

Souto, G. (2013) Visionary Learning for 2030: Secondary Education. In Booklet online "Vision on Open Education 2030 Part 2: School Education", European Commission and The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS).

TEDxKids Brussels 2011

Gina Souto was guest tweeting from TEDxKids in Brussels on June 1st."48 kids, all of them born in 2000, are going get their hands dirty, soldering, tinkering, hacking and composing. A series of hands-on workshops will introduce the kids to a range of skills and methods.

At the same time 400 adults will be treated to an all day program of leading thinkers, experts and makers."

The twitter address is @TEDxKidsEU and there was a fantastic live stream from the event.